The American streaming provider Netflix is ​​relying more than ever on the German-speaking market.

Later this year and over the next two years, the company will spend 500 million euros on local productions.

This should result in a total of 80 new series, films or shows.

This was announced by Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings in Berlin, where he also opened a new company headquarters for the region.

Initially, around 80 employees will be housed in the offices on Warschauer Platz.

"Germany, Austria and Switzerland are one of the most important regions in the whole world for us," said Hastings and made it clear that he does not see the potential of the new in-house productions as limited in this: "This content inspires all over the world."

Alexander Armbruster

Responsible editor for Wirtschaft Online.

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The company has not yet fully revealed what is included in the new plans and whether that has already been determined.

At the same time, Hastings presented a number of well-known German directors, authors, producers and actors who show how serious he is, what demands are behind it and what diversity.

These included, for example, Jantje Friese, Matthias Schweighöfer, Christian Schwochow, Matthias Murmann and Edward Berger.

Berger, for example, has re-filmed the world war classic “Nothing New in the West”, based on the book of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque, which will be shown on Netflix next year.

With Schwochow's commitment, Netflix is ​​also aiming to convince viewers with historically gloomy content. His film "Munich - In the Face of the War" is set in 1938 about the conference in which England and France tried diplomatically to prevent Hitler from going to war. The main characters, however, are not the state leaders at the time, but a British civil servant and a German diplomat. A novel by the successful author Robert Harris, published a few years ago, serves as a template.

Likewise historical, but noticeably more cheerful, the series "The Empress" is said to be about the former Austrian Empress Elisabeth ("Sisi").

Katharina Eyssen, who wrote the script for it, promises a “soap in the best sense” with “great feelings in a small space”.

Schweighöfer, who is one of the most successful German actors of the present, filmed the prelude to the already published film “Army of the Dead” for Netflix under the title “Army of Thieves”, which will start in October.

"You deliver something that hundreds of millions of people can watch in a moment," he says when asked what makes Netflix attractive to him - compared to a movie release.

The competition never sleeps

Netflix also engaged Jantje Friese again, who already achieved a surprise success with the series “Dark”, which was not only awarded the Grimme Prize, but also captivated viewers around the world. It should score with a new mystery series called "1899", which revolves around the passengers of an emigrant ship that is on its way from Europe to New York. Friese is not only impressive in terms of content, but also technically with the virtual film studio in Babelsberg, in which the new series is being created - “Germany is currently the most advanced production technology,” says Netflix founder Hastings. When asked which production he was particularly looking forward to, he also made it clear that that was not relevant. "We are not programmed by what I like, but by whatwhat our viewers want to see. "

In turn, they can now not only choose from an ever larger range on Netflix, but also from what is offered by a growing and financially strong competition. The entertainment group Disney is very successful with its own streaming service Disney Plus and also has all the films from the “Star Wars” universe and the “Marvel” cosmos, as well as popular children's film series.

Apple is increasingly producing its own content, and Amazon is also relying more on its own productions than at the beginning, which can then only be seen there. For its part, Hastings can claim to be still the pioneer in the market and to have already proven that it can deal with a tough environment and technological changes. He founded Netflix together with Marc Randolph in 1997, transformed the company, which started out as an internet video library, into a streaming provider with now well over 200 million subscribers, around eleven million of them in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Hastings founded Netflix together with Marc Randolph in 1997, originally as an internet video store, which then delivered DVDs and Blue Rays to your home on order. As a result of the further development of the Internet, Hastings converted the company into a streaming provider for subscribers who initially licensed content - and conveyed it on its platform as precisely and conveniently as possible using a sophisticated recommendation algorithm.

In the meantime, Netflix itself is a substantial producer of its own series and films, initially known primarily through "House of Cards", there have long been numerous in-house productions for adults and children in countless genres. Well over 200 million people now subscribe to Netflix, and the company is worth around 260 billion dollars on the stock exchange - more than any German listed company. According to its own information, Netflix now has around 11 million subscribers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.